


In Death, Sacrifice

by HiddenTohru



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-20
Updated: 2010-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:56:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTohru/pseuds/HiddenTohru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty years after the archdemon was defeated, Alistair and his love are commanders of the Grey Wardens. However, Alistair has begun having nightmares, and all things must end eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Death, Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in January 2010.

Dear Leliana,

I was surprised to receive your letter last week, but pleased as well. It has been an age, my friend, and considering the recent attacks in Orlais, I was beginning to worry that you might be affected. Please, by all means, come visit the Warden's fortress at Weisshaupt. Alistair and I will most likely be here to greet you, although there is always a chance that one of us will be called away to deal with a raid or small uprising. I am afraid I do not have time to write more, as duties are pressing.

Your friend,  
Laeti, Grey Warden

  
Laeti put down the black feathered quill and rubbed her eyes. Even in broad daylight she was sometimes getting spots in her eyes. One of the first signs of aging, Ashalle had always said, and Laeti grinned ruefully to remember it. There was not much chance of her ever seeing any of the later signs of aging, although she had already begun to feel the cold in her bones on winter mornings several years before, as well as the ache of overworked joints after a tough battle. Things she might have shrugged off, decades before, but were becoming dangerous. Dangerous for a fighter to have, at least. She pushed her chair back from the simple table she had been writing at, taking a moment to address the letter and seal it before standing. It was almost time to go work with the younger Wardens on combat tactics, but she wanted to speak with Turan beforehand.

  
Alistair stood on the battlements, gazing out over the mountains, silently contemplating what lay before him. His hair had begun to silver with age, and there were deeper laugh lines around his eyes, but otherwise he appeared almost unchanged from the days of his youth, of the last Blight when he and Laeti had been all that kept Ferelden from certain ruin. He smiled, briefly, to remember her in those days, so young and fierce in battle, and yet so timid in love... But hadn't they both been? He had been fresh from the Chantry, not knowing much more about girls than he did about dwarves, and she had been separated so swiftly from her clan, thrust among humans who feared and distrusted her. At first he had merely sought to support, to help her along, but as he did so, he had found his heart lost to those golden eyes. He had tried to ignore it, to keep them both safe, but she had been so lovely and strong, and when she flirted back, shyly at first, then increasingly bold, he had simply loved her more. Now, three decades past the events that had made them heroes, and he was faced with such a bitter choice. They had always known it was coming, and that he would likely succumb first. But he knew, if he told her, that she would insist on going with him to the Deep Roads, and that he could not allow. They were neither of them young as they had once been, and he would not see her killed before him. He ran his fingers through his graying hair, and sighed, knowing the only choice before him. That night, then, he would go. Leave her behind, let his second make his excuses, and hope that she didn't try to follow him until it was too late.

  
_He hears his master calling him, and it is dark and rich as the earth he tunnels through. "Find me, find me, I am here, can you feel me, can you touch me, find me, find me, I will set you free..."_

Alistair sat bolt upright in the bed, shaking, sweat pouring down his face. The sheets around him were soaked through, and he felt as frightened as a child. Beside him, Laeti stirred, and he cursed himself for putting it off too long. He had resolved to leave two nights before, but had been unable to tear himself away from his love, the woman whom he had spent almost every day with since the day they'd met. Now this nightmare was the worst yet, and he knew if he didn't leave now, it would soon be too late. He gingerly pushed aside the covers and was just putting his feet on the ground when he felt a cool hand on his back.

"It's started for you, hasn't it?" Laeti felt his muscles tense under her hand, and she pulled herself up in the bed to look at him. "Why didn't you tell me? Did you think I wouldn't notice? Were you planning to leave, in the middle of the night, to let Darell or one of the others tell me where you'd gone?" She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him from behind, whispering in his ear, "didn't I tell you, when all this started, that I would never let you go?"

He sighed, then, putting one hand over his lover's, and said softly, "I was hoping I could get away just this once. Because this is one time that having you with me will hurt more."

She tightened her grip. "No. I've told you before, I don't care if I could live another ten years, it wouldn't mean anything without you. If this is it, then we're going into it together. And from the looks of things, we'll have to leave at first light just to be sure we make it in time." She released him, then, and looked into his eyes. "Let me be selfish, my love. I promise that you won't regret it."

Alistair shook his head, but he knew there was no way around it. "I'll go wake Darell up. He and Nonia should be able to handle everything, even if they don't have the... harmony that we do." With one more defeated sigh, he started putting his boots on as she lit the bedside candle, letting the tiny flame chase away only a fraction of the gloom that surrounded them both.

  
Dear Leliana,

I'm sure you will be surprised to receive this letter only a few days after the first, but I hope it does reach you before you leave Orlais. Alistair has begun having the nightmares, so we're setting off for the Deep Roads tomorrow. I have left a copy with my second, Nonia, in case this does not reach you. I am sorry that we could not meet one last time, but we always knew this might happen. Nonia has orders to treat you as an honored guest, and help you in any way she reasonably can. I can only ask that if you ever meet the others again, you tell them that we both wished to see them one last time. Sadly, a Warden's work is never done.

Your friend,  
Laeti, Grey Warden

  
Laeti wiped dust from her brow and looked up from where she was finishing the last wipedown of her weapons. Alistair was kneeling by the fire, but his face was gaunt and greyer than it should be. She set aside her dar'misaan and went to him.

The Dead Legion camp they had ended up at had accepted them with little comment. They were the only dwarves who knew exactly why the Wardens came into the Deep Roads, and they did what they could in their own way. They offered food and sometimes brief conversations, but otherwise left the Wardens well alone.

Putting a hand on his shoulder, she felt him shudder, as if burned, but he did not move away. "... My love."

He turned his head to look at her, and though he smiled, she could see the dark shadows under his eyes, and the quiet pain behind them. "It's all right. I was just thinking about Tamlen."

Taken aback by a name she had not heard spoken in almost thirty years, Laeti could only respond with, "Why?"

"If it hadn't been for him, you never would have become a Grey Warden. Isn't that what you told me?" He turned back to the fire, a small quaver entering his voice. "I wonder, sometimes, what your life with him would have been like... You'd probably have grown children by now, maybe even grandchildren..."

She squeezed his shoulder hard enough to make him flinch. "Tamlen is dead, Alistair. And I have had a life, with you, that I would not trade for five hundred children and grandchildren. One I do not regret, will never regret."

"I can hear it calling me, Laeti. In my dreams, it almost sings to me. I don't know how much longer I can resist it, especially down here." He stood up, slowly, as if feeling all the weight of the earth above them.

She let her hand fall from his shoulder, knowing then what she could not say. "Come to bed, my love. Tomorrow there will be more death, but tonight we can at least take solace in each other." She led the way back to their tent, on the camp's outskirts, knowing without looking that he would follow. As he always did, since the first time they had met.

––––––––––––-––––––––––––

A shriek was bearing down on her, and Laeti made sure to skewer it before shouting to the Legionnaires behind her to watch their flank. Alistair wasn't far away, beseiged by darkspawn, but holding his own, fighting like a man possessed. She realized for the first time how exhausted he must feel, exhausted by the endless fight, by the fact that they never stopped coming, that there was no true escape from them.

A genlock raced past her to attack one of the dwarves behind, and in that moment she realized what she must do. As another pair of hurlocks nocked their arrows and Alistair raised his shield, she felt the slowing of time, how moments that are so close together can suddenly have so much space in them, and she filled her lungs with air as her eyes filled with tears.

_"Alistair!"_ She screamed his name, with enough urgency to snap him out of his battle frenzy, enough for his eyes to go wide and search frantically for her, trying to make her out in the gloom, and as he searched his shield fell, and she saw the archers drawing their bows. He saw her just as the first arrow hit him in the back, breaking through his armor like a thorn piercing skin. As the second and third arrows hit, the darkspawn around him shouted in triumph, their alien cries echoing off the cavern walls, and she ran to him, only wishing for once that she could fly, if only to catch him before he hit the ground. Still, it was enough.

For once, the darkspawn ignored her, and she took his hand as she pulled his head into her lap. He coughed, once, that dark substance they were so intimately acquainted with. She kissed him then, her tears mingling with blood on his lips, and so he died in her arms.

As she cradled his lifeless form, she remembered something Ashalle had told her, once, when she was still a young girl. She had asked her surrogate parent about the difference between men and women, and after the obligatory biological info had been dispatched, Ashalle had gotten quiet. Thinking the talk was over, Laeti had continued oiling the bowstring she was working on, when Ashalle had surprised her by speaking again.

"In some ways, men will always be children. We cradle them when they have not the strength to face what is before them. We give them strength, da'len. Without us they could not continue. And sometimes, we must decide when it is time for them to stop. From birth, through death, we cradle them. That is why they are so dear to us, da'len. Because we will always cradle them."

Raising her head from her beloved's body, Laeti felt her vision clear for the first time in many months. She drew the dar'misaan from its sheathe and stood. The battlefield was still and silent, although the clash of dwarves and darkspawn was as horrible as always. His death left her with only one last task, and as she ran toward the terrible nexus of the battle, she felt lighter than air.

The dwarves watched as the elven woman leaped onto the Ogre at the head of the wave, stabbing it repeatedly as it roared in pain. When it fell, she was alive with battlelust, drawing all the darkspawn toward her and giving nearly as good as she got. The dwarves renewed their assault, and finally drove the darkspawn back. By then, however, the Grey Warden had fallen, stabbed numerous times by darkspawn blades. Knowing the fate that sometimes befell those surface dwellers who fell in battle, the dwarves collected the bodies of the Grey Wardens and carried them back to their camp, where they laid them on a funeral pyre.

So ended the lives of the two Grey Wardens from Ferelden, who had stood against the Blight alone, collected allies throughout the vastness of that land, and defeated the Archdemon with their armies. They are the Grey. They stand between the darkness and the light.

 


End file.
